


Nine Parts Mess

by vilecrocodile



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Childbirth, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 01:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12265983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vilecrocodile/pseuds/vilecrocodile
Summary: Birth is as bloody as death, and much less satisfying. Warning for fairly graphic references to childbirth.Disclaimer: This is an old fic, written around 2012 or 13. I haven't watched GoT for a while now.





	Nine Parts Mess

He lays the pelt across her hips, gingerly, and purposefully, she knows, to cover her. The day is hot and sweat clings to his face like dew. On her own face it streams like rivers. There is blood on him as well, and she wonders if any of it is his own.

She hopes it is. He could afford to bleed some for this child, seeing as she had done more than her own share. Even Jaime had contributed a paltry amount: A row of crescents across the back of his hand, some beaded with wet rubies where her fingernails had broken the skin. Poor Jaime, she reflects. Even mad with pain Cersei had had more sense than to look to the gods, and instead invoked her brother's name, alternately cursing and begging him. Now his eyes are following the bundle being handed to King Robert, and Cersei lifts her head to see.

 _Is that it?_ If she had had the strength, she might have laughed. Scrubbed clean, cord cut, swaddled in gold cloth, it bore little resemblance to the red wet screaming thing that had come out of her. Yet Jaime is staring at it as though nothing else existed in the world. Cersei has to practically hit his arm to get his attention.

Go, she indicates with an impatient gesture. Go to it.

He stands and obeys, and Cersei pushes herself up upon her elbows to better examine her husband's offering. It is a wolf's pelt, not grey or black but rather a rich russet color, very beautiful. With her bloody thighs and stained sheets it must look as though the thing had died on her lap, or perhaps as though it had been the thing that came forth from her. There have been women who gave birth to monsters.

She pushes herself upright, the sheets peeling painfully from where they had dried with sweat to her back. All her strength seemed to be concentrated in her aching arms; her legs felt like dead weight beneath her, trapped and tangled. The pelt slides down her belly as she sits; instinctively she clutches it back. A moment later she is disgusted with herself. Was she as frightened of her own body as the men were? Even Jaime had averted his eyes. Cersei pushes the pelt aside and forces herself to look.

Red and terrible and red. The limbs and body seem to belong to someone else, someone broken and bloodied, weak and dying, perhaps to the wolf that Robert had killed. It occurs to her suddenly that she does not even know the sex of her child.

 _Gods help it_ , she thinks, _if it is a girl._

But she knows they will not.


End file.
